Sydney, 1960s, corruption: The problem lay with everyone

By Nick Hordern

02 May 2017 — 11:00 PM

Sir Robert Askin, Liberal premier of NSW from 1965 to 1975, was "notoriously corrupt". Everyone knows it, everyone says it – and yet there's no hard evidence for it. Askin is the most senior Australian politician ever to have been so damned. The question of just how he wound up as a pariah is worth pondering.

Askin was a prominent member of a corrupt society: Sydney in the mid-20th century. Prohibitions on prostitution, casinos and off-course betting on horse racing – SP, as it was known – gave police a licence to extract payments from sex workers, casino operators and SP bookies. Restrictions on goods and services as diverse as the supply of alcohol and the availability of telephones were other sources of corruption. SP gambling was ubiquitous, a habit shared by one-third of the adult population. Askin himself operated as an SP bookie in the 1930s and 1940s, and continued to use the services of one in his terms as premier. He was an avid gambler and his whole milieu was corrupt. Like many other politicians of the period, he probably visited casinos, accepted politician donations in cash, and engaged in insider trading.

But Askin's notoriety, the belief that he was "big C Corrupt", rests on a much more specific allegation: that he received massive cash payments collected from casino operators and bookmakers. In the 1980s Askin's intermediary in this was identified as racing identity and casino operator Perce Galea; later, sleaze lord Abe Saffron would be nominated as another candidate. But by the time these claims were made, the principals – Askin, Galea, Saffron – were dead. These claims were never tested in a court or in a Royal Commission. In 1993 Fairfax's Sun Herald commissioned former NSW Coroner Kevin Waller to investigate these and other subsequent allegations of payments to Askin. Waller concluded "one cannot be comfortably satisfied that he [Askin] was the infamous bribe-taker he has been painted". Askin's notoriety is a classic demonstration of the effect of enough mud.

Sir Robert Askin, Liberal premier of NSW from 1965 to 1975, was "notoriously corrupt".

In Sydney Noir: The Golden Years, Michael Duffy and I do not argue that Askin was innocent of receiving bribes; that remains an open question. Rather, our purpose is (among other things) to remind readers of just how shallow the foundations of historical belief can be.

The epoch we dub the "Golden Years", 1966-1972, was the last before the drug traffic started to take over the Sydney underworld. The history of the Golden Years was written in the period 1979-1986 by a group of pioneering journalists – Bob Bottom, David Hickie, Evan Whitton and one academic, Alfred McCoy. They shared a common belief that crime and corruption in NSW, including within the police force, was more organised, more connected to politics and politicians than had been previously acknowledged. The proposition that this organised, hierarchical corruption must have an apex, a manager, seemed logical and for some of these writers – and many readers – Askin fitted the bill perfectly.

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But why did the mud stick to Askin in particular? Everyone has heard, at the pub, at barbecues and dinner parties, a litany of names of politicians thought to be corrupt – local, state, federal; Labor or Liberal – yet very few of these ended up publicly vilified like Askin, "notoriously corrupt" – and usually only after they have faced court. Why him?

Part of the reason was that the allegations of corruption against Askin found a particularly receptive audience – the baby boomers, who came of age during his premiership. He fulfilled their stereotypical expectations of a reactionary conservative; they loved to hate him. For his part Askin loved to bait the boomers; for example his celebrated remark when confronted with anti-Vietnam War protesters: "Drive over the bastards" – a remark he was happy to quote.

More broadly, Askin didn't fit the social mould. He was almost a paradox: a champion of free enterprise with unequivocally working class origins.

His inner-city childhood was overshadowed by the spectres of unemployment and eviction; he grew up on the same mean streets as did his contemporary, the gangster "Chow" Hayes. But he went on to become the longest-serving Liberal Premier in the state's history. Part of his success lay in his ability to persuade blue-collar voters to vote for him. He became a professional politician at a time when some Liberal members of state parliament were gentleman amateurs who kept their day jobs. Askin was no gentleman; he retired to the pub on Saturday mornings, boasted of sexual conquests to his cronies and spat on his hands to slick back his hair.

But Askin's notoriety, the belief that he was 'big C Corrupt', rests on a much more specific allegation: that he received massive cash payments collected from casino operators and bookmakers. Golding/Fairfax Media

If Labor despised him as a class traitor, the conservative establishment never adopted him. Askin didn't have children and left no political heirs. When he died just six years after leaving politics, the attacks began within days, and there were few to defend him. History is written not just by the winners, but by the survivors.

Sydney Noir: The Golden Years, by Michael Duffy and Nick Hordern. NewSouth Publishing. Nick Hordern is a journalist and author.

In the 1980s Askin's intermediary in this was identified as racing identity and casino operator Perce Galea; later, sleaze lord Abe Saffron (shown here) would be nominated as another candidate. Fairfax Media

Victoria Street, Kings Cross, Sydney, Askin himself operated as an SP bookie in the 1930s and 1940s, and continued to use the services of one in his terms as premier. Supplied

The Paradise Strip Place on Victoria Street, Kings Cross, Sydney, 3 May Sydney in the mid-20th century. Prohibitions on prostitution, casinos and off-course betting on horse racing – SP, as it was known – gave police a license to extract payments from sex workers, casino operators and SP bookies Supplied

But Askin's notoriety, the belief that he was 'big C Corrupt', rests on a much more specific allegation: that he received massive cash payments collected from casino operators and bookmakers. Fairfax Media